Experimental Success, The Launch Event Begins
"The first critical point has been reached. Energy output is stable, and conversion is normal."
"We are now increasing the output. Two hundred thousand degrees Celsius, three hundred thousand degrees Celsius... five hundred thousand degrees Celsius, one million degrees Celsius. The energy gain factor q-value has now exceeded 0.500."
"According to the data, current energy production has already reached the point of self-sufficiency. However, Brownian motion of the fuel inside the vacuum chamber is extremely intense, and the D-shaped superconducting toroidal field magnets are no longer providing enough field strength. Requesting further increase in power output."
As the data kept changing, the researchers in the lab continuously reported on the readings under their responsibility.
"Permission granted to increase output."
"Data team, monitor all changes at all times!"
"Begin fine adjustment of the power output."
At that moment, Otto remained calm as he watched everything in front of him. Under his steady stream of commands, the atmosphere among the staff finally stabilized somewhat.
"Understood."
"Output has been increased. The interior of the device is currently extremely stable."
"The temperature in the vacuum chamber is rising again. Energy has now reached ten million degrees, and the q-value is climbing steadily as well."
Even with Otto keeping control from the rear, those mere few seconds still felt like an enormous battle to the researchers, yet even so, they continued doing their jobs and reporting every stage.
"The internal temperature of the device has now exceeded one hundred million degrees. The energy gain factor q-value has broken through 100. Magnetic field response is stable. Coil and equipment checks are normal."
"Energy output is stable!"
"We did it! We created a miracle!"
At that point, the researchers could no longer hold themselves back and shouted out loud. In the next moment, the entire room erupted into celebration. Every person there, male or female, embraced whoever was nearest. Every face was filled with joy and excitement.
"Enough. Don't start celebrating just yet. Continue. Judging from the current data, it still has room to go higher."
"And if we want to scale it up to our original target, we're still far from that point."
"Continue increasing energy output. Keep raising the magnetic field response. Maintain the temperature of both the toroidal and poloidal field coils. Keep the liquid helium cooling system running continuously."
While everyone else was celebrating, Otto frowned and raised his voice toward the entire room.
What they had already achieved was indeed a major success, but since the instruments and data were still all normal, then they had to continue and test the theoretical maximum output of controlled fusion.
Hearing Otto's stern tone, everyone quickly put away their earlier excitement and lowered their heads to continue working.
"Begin raising the power output again!"
"Magnetic field response remains normal. Toroidal and poloidal field coil temperature parameters are normal."
"Overall device status normal!"
"Liquid helium cooling system is continuing output. All stabilization is normal."
"The reactor device temperature is currently increasing at a rate of one million degrees per second. The increase remains normal. It is estimated that the internal pressure will exceed one hundred billion atmospheres."
"Seven hundred million degrees... eight hundred million degrees... nine hundred million..."
"One billion degrees!!!"
"Report! The ultra-high vacuum chamber has now reached one billion degrees Celsius. The energy gain factor q-value has reached 10,000, and the plasma density-time product has exceeded one quadrillion. The entire device has now entered a stable state."
"Doctor! We really succeeded!!!"
As time passed, inside the control room at the center of the reactor, the researchers saw that all the data on the control panels remained completely stable, and they roared in excitement.
This time, everyone truly lost control and cheered at full volume.
Even Otto, who had been strict with himself from beginning to end, said nothing more now. He simply looked at everyone present with relief in his eyes, then turned that same expression of fulfilled trust toward Killian.
"Congratulations. You did it."
Looking at the man before him, Killian praised him sincerely.
In another world, Otto had died in pursuit of solar energy. Yet in this timeline, without the help of those mechanical arms, he had still managed to achieve controlled fusion energy in another form.
For a moment, Killian could not help wondering what it would be like if the two Ottos were ever to meet.
"Thank you, boss. Although all of this was built on the technology you gave me."
"But strangely enough, after completing this experiment, I feel like some long-held obsession in my heart has finally been released."
Hearing Killian's words, Otto responded with an incredibly relaxed expression.
"The biggest factor was still your own effort. There's a huge difference between what I gave you and what you've produced here."
"Unless you're telling me that if I handed you dark matter capture technology, you could build me a dark matter engine, then I might say my contribution was the major part."
Killian smiled and joked with him.
Before he had transmigrated, cutting-edge laboratories in the world had already managed to capture dark matter. But they had only captured it. If they wanted to go further and truly develop it, there was no way it could happen in just a few decades.
And the applications of dark matter would be enormous.
Still, those were matters for a distant future.
"Hahaha, boss, that challenge would be far too much. Unless you let me spend a few years first studying the academic material on dark matter."
Otto laughed and replied.
Not everyone was like Tony, able to read through someone's entire academic paper in a single night and then walk away with degrees and titles.
Most researchers spent their entire lives focused in only one direction, and dark matter itself was an entirely new field of study.
If he were asked to do that project, then without several years of preparation, he would not even dare begin.
Unless the full design blueprint were placed directly in front of him.
Otherwise, even with a reverse-engineering blueprint like the one he had now, he still did not think he could accomplish it in a short period of time.
...
Fusion technology is the process in which two lighter atomic nuclei combine into a heavier atomic nucleus and release energy.
In nature, the easiest fusion reaction to achieve is the fusion of hydrogen isotopes, deuterium and tritium. This reaction has been taking place in the sun for five billion years.
That is also why, in the Spider-Man story, Otto referred to it as the power of the sun.
Because the sun itself works through nuclear fusion.
Fusion primarily relies on hydrogen isotopes. Unlike fission, fusion does not produce the long-term, high-level nuclear radiation associated with nuclear waste. It also does not produce greenhouse gases, which means it causes almost no environmental pollution.
Humanity first came to understand thermonuclear fusion from hydrogen bomb explosions.
So scientists began hoping to invent a device that could effectively control the process of a hydrogen bomb explosion and allow energy to be released in a stable, continuous way.
That was because nuclear energy remains the largest energy source known to humanity today.
It mainly exists in two forms: fission energy and fusion energy.
Fission energy is the huge release of energy when atoms of heavy metal elements split apart, and this has already been commercialized.
But because elements like uranium are scarce on Earth, and conventional fission reactors produce long-lived and highly radioactive nuclear waste, those factors have limited the future of fission.
The other form of nuclear energy is fusion, which has not yet been commercialized.
Deuterium is abundant in Earth's seawater, with reserves reaching forty trillion tons. If all of it were used for fusion, the released energy would be enough to support humanity for tens of billions of years, and the reaction product would simply be helium, which has no radioactive pollution.
In addition, because fusion requires extremely high temperatures, if any part of the process goes wrong, the fuel temperature will automatically fall, and the fusion reaction will stop on its own.
That also means a fusion reactor is a subcritical reactor. It can never suffer an accident like the fission disaster at Chernobyl. It is safe.
Therefore, fusion energy is an unlimited, clean, and safe new form of power.
And the system Killian's team was now using was precisely the latter, relying on the mainstream Tokamak device under magnetic confinement and using the hydrogen isotopes deuterium and tritium as fusion fuel.
The most critical performance benchmark for controlled fusion is the output-input ratio, Q greater than 1, which means the self-sustaining stage. To achieve commercial electricity generation, Q needs to exceed 10, the break-even stage. To gain overwhelming superiority over traditional power generation, Q likely needs to exceed 80.
You could say that the greater the Q-value, the higher the energy conversion efficiency.
And now, after their experiment, the Q-value had actually reached 10,000.
That meant that during the energy conversion and output process, there was almost no loss of energy at all, nearly perfect efficiency.
If, after this, the entire laboratory's power supply were replaced with the new fusion reactor, then its daily electricity output could reach two hundred million kilowatt-hours, equivalent to the output of the entire Three Gorges power station.
The biggest reason for that is that fusion releases far more energy than fission, at least four to eight times more.
For a direct comparison, one could simply look at the difference between a hydrogen bomb and an atomic bomb at the same mass and volume.
From this day forward, Killian's Pioneer Technology would never again have to worry about energy.
And any surplus energy could be used without limitation to produce the controlled fusion batteries for the T-800, each of which could maintain a T-800's functions for 120 years.
At that moment, Killian could already imagine the shock the people of the world would feel at the launch event that was soon coming.
...
A few days later, after Killian had rested, Pioneer Technology's launch event once again opened before the public.
This time, what satisfied the public most was that even if many people could not attend for one reason or another, Pioneer Technology had already opened an official live broadcast on the company website.
And according to Pioneer Technology's public announcement, one hundred lucky viewers would be selected from every country and region to receive company gifts.
Because of that, the number of people in the livestream quickly broke into eight digits.
And that was still in an era where smart devices had not yet become universal enough for every person to own one.
It could be said that almost everyone who had internet access and the ability to get online had come to support the event.
And according to the backend data Lisa had collected, among the people who had already bought Pioneer Technology smartphones, more than seventy percent were watching through their phones, and that percentage was still rising.
By the time the launch truly began, it was expected to exceed ninety percent.
At the same time, the scene at Pioneer Technology's headquarters was no less intense than the online turnout.
In front of the Pioneer Technology Tower, traffic was everywhere.
This had originally just been a technology industrial park. Aside from angel investors, the people who usually came here were mostly employees, since the location itself was remote and it took more than half an hour by car just to reach the nearest city.
But today, that place had unexpectedly turned into a sea of people and an endless stream of vehicles.
The last time there had been this much foot traffic was during the Lunar New Year migration.
And when noon finally arrived, countless news vans and media organizations from all over the country had gathered outside Pioneer Technology Tower. Many reporters and hosts were already standing among the crowds, reporting live to cameras under what could only be described as a forest of microphones and cameras.
"To all our viewers watching, hello everyone. This is The New York Times, and I'm your old friend Elisa. We are currently standing outside Pioneer Technology headquarters in Miami, Florida."
"As you can all see, this place is already packed with people, and aside from us, there are journalists from dozens of other media outlets here as well."
"Today is an extremely special day, because the latest product launch event from the world's number one technology company, Pioneer Technology, which many people have already nicknamed the black-tech company, is about to begin here."
"As one of the most influential technology companies in the world today, Pioneer Technology has developed in an extremely low-key way. But every single one of its launch events has attracted the attention of the entire world."
"Since the moment this company first appeared in the public eye until now, it has already held two launch events in just one year, and each of them stunned the world and captured everyone's attention."
"At the first event, the introduction of the personal health assistant Baymax officially launched humanity into a new era of medicine. From that day on, people could monitor their own health anytime and anywhere, preventing and eliminating the occurrence of all kinds of major diseases."
"At the second event, Pioneer Technology's smartphone, I believe everyone who has used it has nothing but praise for it. At the very least, everyone around me in the newsroom has already become completely devoted to Pioneer Technology."
(End of Chapter)
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